PLANT-MUMMIES. 235 



greeted first the light of heaven, and islands sank, to be 

 seen no more. All the powers of nature were unchained ; 

 the earth was one vast battle field, on which the elements 

 fought for the empire of the world. It was in those hours 

 of gigantic strife, and, amidst the thousand thunders of 

 a quaking earth and a threatening heaven, that huge forests 

 were buried in the bosom of the earth, to wait in patience 

 for the day of their resurrection. 



Upon the first islands that rose out of the gurgling, 

 struggling waters, when land and water were parted by 

 the Most High, there grew forests of gigantic forms, of 

 horse-tails and club-mosses, full of beauty and luxuriant 

 vigor, but they bloomed and blossomed not. Sigillaria 

 gently waved their lofty crowns on their slender curiously 

 marked trunks. In the pride of their grandeur, rising high 

 above the lowly bushes around them, they ranged them- 

 selves in copses and forests. Parasite ferns fluttered in 

 the restless winds, like green pennants, from column-shaped, 

 gigantic canes, whilst gentler breezes whispered sweet se- 

 crets to the graceful rushes along the batiks of intermin- 

 able marshes, and stigmarias painted the quiet surface of 

 peaceful inlets, with the beauteous image of their graceful 

 foliage. Algae and mosses grew in pleasing forms on rock 

 and stone, and struck their tiny roots deep into cleft and 

 fissure. 



Where now Spitzbergen and Greenland, Melville and 

 Bear Islands rise in the splendor of eternal snow and ice, 

 tall grasses were then rocking and dreaming of the won- 

 drous time that would come when Man should be born 

 after the image of God. Trees, high and strong, bushes 



